Thursday 28 June 2012

Southampton's Barmy Bid For Birmingham's Butland

After shelling out a very toppy sounding £7m for Jay Rodrigues, Southampton have now bid a quite staggering £6m for Birmingham's reserve keeper.

Now I accept that Butland may have a bright future ahead of him, but can Southampton really afford to be buying up the future of English football whilst ignoring the demands of the present? Butland may be the new Banks, Shilton or Seaman, but at the moment he is nothing more than a bright young prospect, and keepers, like quality wine, mature with age. As good as the boy is, he will make mistakes whilst young and will suffer a dip or two in form. It's all very well looking good on the training field and in the lower divisions, but in front of a full house at Old Traford, with the eyes of the world watching, you have to be very special indeed to cope with the pressure, as Manchester United's own young keeper discovered last season.

And meanwhile, Southampton have a perfectly good keeper in Kelvin Davis so surely other positions should be the priority? Mind you, Birmingham's decision to reject a £6m offer is also staggering. They really must rate the boy to turn that sort of money down given their current plight!



14 comments:

Anonymous said...

your obsessed with Birmingham City, Get over us, or change teams and support us ;)

Anonymous said...

Concentrate on yourselves West Ham rather than what Saints are doing

Anonymous said...

Who has said Saints have offered £6M anyway? Only some crummy club call type sites and a couple of the dodgy rags and any other jealous fan!
Can't see how you can waste time and criticise a club for something that most probably couldn't be further from the truth?
As far as I can see since the new owners have taken over and put a 5 year plan (3 years in so far) into operation they havent put a foot wrong yet!
For a sucessful wealthy (£3B) individual or a company such as saints owners to invest in a business to the tune of £33m so far and have no debt, it doesn't sound to me they will start doing rash and stupid things unlike some teams who seem to exist an operate like football is a game of monopoly and rack up massive debts mention no names (and I don't mean grubby p*mp*y) ha!!!! Some people can't see the woods for the trees can they!!!!!

Anonymous said...

No your right, don't spend money on an asset that is likely to increase in value over a short space of time with a reasonable outlay on wages.

Let's do things the West Ham way and spend millions on a player coming to the end of their career with declining value and high wages.

Southampton are investing in the future. Not just next season.

Anonymous said...

Do I detect a hint of jealousy (again)? You have no idea - we only have one keeper at the moment, so signing Butland would allow Davis to get another crack at the Premier League while gradually exposing Butland to Premier League football.

Stani said...

Davis is 35 HF, and last season was beginning to show his age with a few mistakes, even though he had an excellent season before that in League One.

I don't know much about Butland so will reserve judgment, but the Saints did need a keeper, in my opinion.

Hammersfan said...

Jussi is 37 Stani, Friedal is 42! Davis was voted keeper of the year in the Championship last season by his fellow professionals. Doesn't sound like a man on the slide to me!

1854, Robinson is available. He would save you more points next season than Butland!

Anonymous said...

You are perfectly entitled to comment on what is happening at Southampton or Birmingham. After all, Blues fans have had plenty to say about your slightly creepy owners!

Who knows if "Jack's the lad". Dave Watson says he'll be even better than two other keepers he's trained at Birmingham: Ben Foster & Joe Hart!

In any event, the vast majority of Blues fans want to see him play for us at least once!

See you season after next!

KRO

Ted

Stani said...

Players age differently HF. I don't need to tell you that's a weak point. I watched him closely last season as he was in my fantasy team. Take it from me, he's on the way out, I'm sure of it. But I would be absolutely delighted if Southampton persevere with him, of course I would.

Come the season, I shall be reminding you of this little debate ;)

Anonymous said...

Don't think you get it, saints are building up a team that will be around for years so there is no point buying older players. Saints have a great academy but a young keeper is what they miss and I do believe they are building up a team of mainly English talant and that's something that other premier clubs needs to do to help our own national side, good luck to them I say.

Anonymous said...

Foster is going to west brom for 4 million so why would we sell Butland ?He will be the keeper for the olympic team then we can all see how good he is.

Anonymous said...

Similar post to the Rodrigues blog and equally as short sighted. Saints are building a team for the future. We have money available, but we're spending wisely on youth. England fans should be pleased there's a chance he might join Southampton with our track record of developing young players. If the figures quoted are real it is indeed a lot of money for someone so inexperienced, but if that's the going price and we can afford it, why shouldn't we go for it.

Anonymous said...

As a west ham fan I can't argue at all with your point 18:46.

I wish we had your owners with their 5 year plan rather than ours with their 5 minute one.

Good luck in the premiership saints.

Hammersfan said...

I think there is a happy middle ground somewhere between the position of the two clubs. Let's see who both sign in the coming weeks. Gallas doesn't inspire me as a target I must say!